Red Square Finds Half Million In Missing Profits
Red Square Systems is an IT Consulting and Services company based in Western Pennsylvania. Services offered include Network Infrastructure Support, Business Consulting and Application Services. The six-year-old company has approximately 30 employees and a base of 250 customers, 75 of whom are under contract for ongoing services including on-demand remote monitoring and help desk assistance. With that many customers and projects, Red Square needs to have a bullet-proof system for logging and setting up engagements, tracking progress against milestones, monitoring resources, and capturing billable time. They do it all with Autotask™.
Red Square grew rapidly for three years, then growth stalled because of inability to effectively manage internal business processes. As a result customer satisfaction and team morale suffered. The company tried to use several different kinds of software to handle separate business functions but transfer errors were introduced at the "air gaps" between applications. They were using Salesforce.com for their sales teams to manage their contacts, MS Project for some of their project management, AmberCAT for time-tracking and help desk ticketing, QuickBooks for accounting, plus a home-grown database they called "White Book" they developed internally out of MS Access, to convert ticketing and time info into usable data that would be applied to invoice customers.
Red Square was having a lot of internal problems collecting and capturing time on our projects. There was no way to know if they were billing correctly until the end of a month. Time tracking problems within project management translated into a related problem for Red Square: billing. It was taking them 25 to 30 days to get invoices out, and then another month to collect, so cash flow did not directly reflect any positive change or need in other areas of the business. In fact, at one point, Red Square failed to bill a group of clients for four or five months. The clients pointed that out to Red Square.
To unravel the series of intricate delays, they started to work backwards to understand how all of these different elements were connected. . . . from when the sales team first identified a prospect, to bringing on a new customer, to managing projects for those customers, to the finance team sending out an invoice. They realized that everything was connected, and their business systems were not.
The Autotask Solution
After extensive research and product evaluations, Red Square settled on Autotask to help them run their projects, and all related business functions that touch project management. Now that Red Square uses Autotask, they have not had a single customer ask, what happened to the contract, or wonder if and when Red Square was going to do the project, question when a bill was coming in, or wonder what a bill was for. And, because time is now entered into projects in "real time," there are virtually no delays in billing. Adopting Autotask IT Services Management Software has resulted in an enormous reduction in errors, dramatically improved customer satisfaction, improved teamwork and morale and over half a million dollars in increased profits.
In Their Own Words ... Client Testimonials
Red Square's Jason Jacobetz says, "We use Autotask, but in a very unique way. Because we are so heavily involved in process, we wanted a system that could track and integrate well with existing and well-established workflow policies."
"We found some other solutions that were really designed more for the enterprise, and cost a small fortune. One of the reasons we went with Autotask was it was very cost-effective. That alone was a big point on our scorecard. Not just the initial price, but the long-term investment."
"We love the flexibility that Autotask offer with its licensing model. Because it is a web-based application, Autotask allows us to add or delete users on a month-to-month basis, paying only for the licenses we need."
"Contract Activation was a major issue for our sales, delivery, and finance team, and now it has become a key component and driver for successful projects… that's how I would quantify it!"
"It's great knowing that I can be working with a contractor on a project, and I can open a new user account license for a month or two, the contractor can access the project from anywhere, any time. It's very easy to do, and especially comforting to know that we are accurately capturing incurred time and details about what is being delivered to our customer."
Ian James, President of Red Square, adds, "Without increasing sales, with Autotask, we have added $550,000 in increased profits in the first year."
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